5 Things We Learned from the First Doctor Strange Trailer

The Doctor Strange trailer premiered during Jimmy Kimmel Live on April 12 and showed the world the first look at Marvel’s second movie release of 2016. While Captain America: Civil War is coming next month, Doctor Strange is the company’s November release, hitting on Nov. 4, and carrying through into the holiday season for Marvel. There have been some photos released from the filming of the movie, proving that Doctor Strange will look exactly the same as he does in the comics.

While that is cool, the trailer showed exactly what we might expect from this very different superhero movie. Here are five things that we learned from the first official Doctor Strange trailer.

This is Doctor Strange’s Origin Story

Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige has said in the past that Marvel wasn’t really wanting to do origin stories anymore, as the idea is played out, However, he made an exception for Doctor Strange. He told Screen Rant last October that the Doctor Strange movie would be an origin story, and this trailer proves that those plans remained intact. That is smart.

Refusing to re-tell the Spider-Man origin in that character’s new movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming, makes sense. Spider-Man has had two origin stories since 2002 told on the big screen. Black Panther will likely not be an origin, as he is being introduced in Captain America: Civil War. However, Doctor Strange is a great exception. We know that Strange is already in power during the current timeline because they mentioned him in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Despite this, he has a great origin worth telling.

Strange was a neurosurgeon who was arrogant and conceited until an auto accident took away the use of his hands. He went searching for a greater power that he believed could return the use of his hands. However, what he found was the Ancient One and the truth that he was chosen to be the new Sorcerer Supreme. His change from arrogance to great responsibility is the story this movie will tell.

The Ancient One Has Undergone a Sex Change

The Ancient One in the comics was a very old Asian man who was this world’s Sorcerer Supreme. Strange began to train under him along with a fellow student named Baron Mordo. When the Ancient One chose Strange to be his successor, it turned Mordo into a villain and Strange became the most powerful magic user in the world. In the movie, as the trailer shows, the Ancient One is now a female (Tilda Swinton), and from the look of the trailer, that might be a great change.

Who is Baron Mordo?

The idea is that Baron Mordo will be the main villain here since he was there during Doctor Strange’s origin story. However, the trailer shows nothing about the villain and just focuses on Strange’s accident and his willingness to accept the Ancient One’s training. However, there are shots of another character with nothing to explain who he is. That is Chiwetel Ejiofor, who iMDB lists as playing Baron Mordo. He doesn’t do much in the trailer, but it at least showed that he is in the movie.

Who is Rachel McAdams Playing?

Rachel McAdams is a pretty big name and some people think she is meant to play Clea, the mistress of the Dark Dimension, in Doctor Strange. In the comics, she is a very powerful being, a student to Strange after he becomes the Sorcerer Supreme, and also his love interest. That means she is more powerful than Jane Foster was in Thor, but comparable to her importance to the story. Feige also said that she “plays a very, very big part in the movie and represents a certain point of view of the worlds that we experience in that movie.”

In the trailer, she is seen once and appears to be a nurse. However, in the comics, she is also the niece of Dormammu, Doctor Strange’s greatest enemy, and lives in the Dark Dimension. That means she will have to have her story altered somewhat in the movie if she is to play Clea.

This Looks More Like Inception Than a Marvel Movie

Feige said that this movie will be very different from other Marvel movies. Tilda Swinton said in an interview that “world that Doctor Strange goes into is really, really, really exciting. I’m really interested as both an actor and a fan to see what’s done in this particular world. It’s all about creativity. It’s not about everything exploding at the end. It’s about something very different.”

The trailer shows that as well. While some have compared this to The Matrix, scenes in this trailer look almost more like Inception. No matter how it turns out, this is definitely something completely different for the Marvel Universe.

Shawn is a film critic with 30 years of experience in print and online media. He is a former member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle and loves everything from critically acclaimed movies to B-level action flicks and everything in between.